When people go out to eat, they expect just a few things in exchange for their hard-earned cash: good service and good food. After being ignored, getting the wrong order, or having to deal with a rude server, these disappointed diners chose to let their servers know in the strongest way possible that their service was not up to par.
Accidents Happen, But That Reaction Is Totally Uncalled For
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“I had a waiter spill a $100 bottle of cab (first and last time in my life I ever paid that much for a bottle of anything) all over my dinner. He refused to replace either. After I didn’t tip him, he literally chased me out of the restaurant and physically threatened me for his tip. He had to be restrained by the manager.”
It Was Obvious That She’d Rather Be Serving Any Table But Theirs
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“This happened a few years ago to me and my fiancée and our friends. I worked at an Indian restaurant with one of my lady’s best friends. The owners of the restaurant had just opened a new Mexican place, so we all decided to go. It had been open about a week, so it would have been understandable if the food and service weren’t out of this world, but what we got was amazing. In our group, there’s 7 or 8 of us. Next to us is a group of clearly well to do people, maybe 6 or so. Our server has only the two tables. This is what follows next: Our server got our drink order, didn’t bring them for 20 minutes, took our food order, that didn’t come for nearly two hours. Meanwhile, the rich people next to us got the best service I’ve ever seen. She was clearly just ignoring us and pegging us as cheap college kids yet all of us worked in restaurants. Finally our food came and all the orders were wrong, no one got correct food. One girl didn’t even get her meal until we were about to walk out the door. Oh, also our drinks never got refilled once. So after a while of this, we got a manager, who looked blankly at me and walked away without saying a word. Finally we got someone else to come talk to us. We explained everything to her. Lastly, we drop the owners’ names, saying we work for him and will be telling him everything that happens. The General Manager’s face went slate white, he knows they’re screwed. After all of this, we just wanted to leave. They gave us half off the entire meal, then the server came up to us and said, ‘My bad, guys.’ That’s all we got in a form of an apology. We left her a tip of about 3 cents. On our way out, the hostesses were all smiles and asking us how the meal was. I turned to this girl, who was clearly unaware of what happened, and just went, ‘It was terrible,’ and I grabbed a giant handful of peppermints and walked out.”
Even The Manager Was Totally Lacking In Professionalism
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“My wife and I went to a restaurant one night and since it was a Saturday night on the edge of downtown, it was pretty busy. We asked for a table for two and are seated after a short wait. They led us to a table that was next to the kitchen door and a busboy station, so dirty dishes were continually piled up behind me. This table was also situated behind a pillar, so we’re visually cut off from the rest of the restaurant. We ordered some drinks. About 20 minutes go by, the drinks never came.
The manager was walking by asking other tables how they’re doing. We grabbed her attention and explained the missing drinks and MIA waitress. The manager asked for the waitress’s name. I replied that I didn’t know her name and I didn’t recall seeing a name tag. She said nothing, but gives me the one-eyebrow-raised-look-of-suspicion usually reserved for when little kids tell you lame fibs. She left to find our waitress and never returned. We finally order from another passing waiter, as it’s late enough now, we were hungry and we decided to take our chances. Lo and behold, our food came, but still no drinks.
While we’re eating, the original MIA waitress walked up, pointed to her name tag and said, ‘Beth. My name is Beth,’ and walked away. My lady and I exchanged puzzled glances and continued to eat. When Beth brought us the check, I asked to see the manager. Beth said, ‘Why? What are you going to say?’ I told her that I wanted to let the manager know that the service here was far below adequate. We were stuck in the corner and ignored. I reminded her about the drinks that never arrived and she just adopted the attitude of a snarky teenager, huffing and eye-rolling.
‘Get me the manager. NOW, please.’
‘All right, I’ll see if she’ll come over,’ promised Beth.
After 15 minutes, the manager arrived. The FIRST thing out of her mouth: ‘Why don’t you like Beth?’ I snapped, but composed myself quickly. I explained that we were ignored for the past 90 minutes and this has nothing to do with liking or not liking anybody. Heck, we hardly even met Beth. I explained that I’m not trying to scam a meal. We ordered the food and ate the food, so I intended to pay, but I would not be returning and would tell others to steer clear of this place. ‘Ignored?’ cried the manager incredulously, ‘This is the date table. We find that young couples like to be off by themselves and not be bothered! Now, how about I give you a voucher for a free dessert next time you come in?’
‘Next time?’ I said, ‘You think there’s gonna be a next time?’
At this point, my wife, silent until now, said, ‘You could give us free dessert right now.’
The manager furrowed her brow and said, ‘Well if I gave it to you now, then I KNOW you wouldn’t come back.’
I paid the bill, left the ol’ one-penny tip (you know, to make a STATEMENT) and visited the little boys’ room. On the way out of the restaurant, Beth brushed by us and mumbled, ‘Thanks for the tip, cheap-o.’ That place closed about 6 months later.”
When They Didn’t Tip Him What He Expected, He Got Violent
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“We went to a restaurant for dinner with my girlfriend and her friends for her birthday. We had about 10 people and had about five different tabs which all included an 18% minimum tip.
The service was terrible, the server was incredibly rude and would always respond with some kind of sarcasm when we asked questions about the menu. He took the wrong drink orders twice and blamed us for getting them wrong. Brought all the appetizers and entrees at the same time and got upset when we said we didn’t want the apps anymore. My friend paid in cash. She was expecting to see five bucks and some change back. When the server came back there was no receipt and only four bucks and change there. She asked him to see the receipt to see if she had miscalculated. Instead of saying something along the lines of, ‘I’ll go check,’ or something accommodating like that, the dude got irritated and said that he threw away the receipt and reached for his wallet and said, ‘How about I just give you a dollar if you want it that bad.’
That ticked us all off, so we didn’t leave any extra tip. I wrote down ‘NOPE!’ on my receipt in the additional tip line. When I went to use the men’s room before leaving, he tapped my shoulder as I was washing my hands and goes, ‘You think you’re pretty funny with that tip, don’t you? Why don’t we step outside so I can show you how funny I can be?’
I was like, WHAT? I called the manager over and told him her server wanted to fight me because I didn’t tip him. I explained the whole situation to her while the dude was just eyeing me the whole time. Other servers had to calm him down cause he kept trying to interrupt me when I was talking to the manager. I declined all their gift cards because I don’t wanna come back to a place where the staff is gonna shank me.”
Her Attitude Disappeared Once She Saw What They Did With The Tip
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“We had a self-entitled plate-carrier get snippy with us in Cleveland like two years back. It was supposed to be a quick, light lunch at a little sandwich shop after a business meeting. There were 12 of us, and I was covering everything on my company card, so one bill.
She didn’t screw up the food order and she stayed away from the table the whole time instead of bothering us every two minutes to ask how the food was or to top off half-full drinks, so, as far as we were concerned, she did a great job.
We were there for maybe a half hour total and with 12 of us laying down $4-$10 cash tip (on $10-14 tabs) because they just had their meals paid for. I had over $80 in collected in my hand, over 60% tip – over $160 an hour adjusted for doing nothing for a half-an-hour other than carrying food that someone else prepared from the little window to our table when someone rang a bell, and to bring maybe half of us a single refill.
She took a look at the credit card slip while we were all finishing up and saying our goodbyes. I intended to pay my tip in cash to make it easier for her to lie about her income to the IRS, because I’ve worked food service, and I like to help a sista’ out every once in a while. The only thing written in the ‘tip’ section on the slip was something silly small, like $2.13, to round the tab up to an even $150 because I like even numbers, they make me happy.
But she didn’t see the cash.
She IMMEDIATELY got an attitude, LOUDLY making derogatory comments about ‘table of cheap jerks’ to another server, quite deliberately within earshot of our table and a couple of others in the restaurant that turned to look.
Well, the crew, who all just threw down about 30-90% cash tips, were all pretty offended. I called her out, flagging the other server down as she walked by and telling her we needed a manager ASAP.
The manager came over, and I pointed at the plate-carrier and asked to have her brought over to join us. I explained quite politely why I called him over and that his server insulted both myself and my colleges with her arrogance. I repeated what she said. Then I made her repeat what she said again to the manager, like a small child.
I said I called her over not because I wanted her punished, but to watch as I took the stack of cash that was going to go to her and started passing it back to everyone sitting there. I made a point of noting each amount as I went around the table (confirming the amount, ‘You gave me $6, right?’) with every $5 and $10 especially being pulled out and displayed for a moment so she could see it before handing it back to its owner. All but one of them took their tip back.
Then I handed the second server who got involved my tip for calling the manager over, which I bumped up to a $10, just so I could continue to savor the pain on the server’s face while she watched 1/4 of her rent for that month disappear.
And it felt good…”
The Way They Used That Baby Is Absolutely Shameful
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“So me and some friends were at a Chinese Buffet (a buffet mind you, not an actual restaurant) and at the end of our meal, the waitress asked if we were ready to pay. She stood there while my friends filled out the receipt and then brought one of the other waitresses over. The other waitress brought her baby over. She then proceeded to say, ‘You’re going to leave a big tip, yes? A big big tip for the baby?’ Well, see, I was going to tip, but now I’m not. Some of my friends felt bad about not leaving anything so they left a dollar or so, but anybody who has the audacity to do that to me is getting the exact opposite. I can’t believe some people actually buy into that. They were nasty about it, too.”
Her Strange “Flirtation” Routine Rubbed The Whole Table The Wrong Way
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“This was back when I was in my third semester of college. Finals had just finished and I was in a strange funk from lack of sleep and not seeing friends for about two weeks straight. I was tired and nervous cause finals. Anyways, to relieve some stress, I decided to go out with friends and eat some hot wings. I gathered a few of my closest friends and we headed off to a certain owl-themed hot wing establishment. We got our menus and started chatting, looking at the menu and just chilling.
Then our waitress came over and did nothing. She smiled, kinda leaned in, rested her arms on the table, and just stared at us. We were thrown off and after a good few minutes or so, she finally asked us what we would like to drink. When she came back with our drinks, she did the same thing, so we just started ordering because if she’s not gonna do her job, we may as well do it for her. We got our food (fried pickles and a ton of wings) and we thought things might resume to normal. NOPE.
This is the weird moment. Remember, she hadn’t really engaged us the whole time we were there, but halfway through the dinner, she came over and did her little routine: Smile, lean, stare. Then she looked me right in the eyes and ate one of the fried pickles. Looked over to my friend and again ate another one. She then giggled and left a table full of mortified customers. We just stopped eating at that point, asked for the bill and left no tip. While we were trying to scramble away, I must have pocketed her pen when I signed the receipt. Some sad sack regular customer came outside and asked for her pen. We gave it back and he said something along the lines of, ‘Guess kids these days don’t know how to tip.’
I responded with, ‘Not for crappy service, I don’t!’ I don’t expect much when going out; I always tip a decent amount, even if service is slightly sub-par, because I know too many people who are servers and I know for a fact I could never deal with so much stuff, but some things I expect is:
1) Being engaged by the person serving me (not staring at me)
2) NOT HAVING THEM EAT MY FOOD WITH HANDS THAT HAVE BEEN GOD KNOWS WHERE.”
She Literally Chased Them Out Of Restaurant
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“My family and I went to a sushi restaurant for my cousin’s birthday. The service wasn’t really that good, they gave us the wrong drinks and they forgot stuff that we asked for as soon as they walked away, so we gave the waitress like a $2 tip instead of the usual $5. As we’re walking in the parking lot back to our car, the waitress ran after us and told us that we didn’t tip 15%! She was literally chasing after us. My uncle gave us this ‘seriously?’ look and pretended that he was going to follow her back into the restaurant to pay. Then as soon as she went through the door, my uncle started sprinting to the car and we all ran and jumped inside and drove away. When I looked through the back window, I could see the waitress and her manager running after us, but they couldn’t catch up. Yeah, never went back there again.”
She Barely Did Anything, But Was Somehow Shocked When Her Tip Reflected That
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“For the Super Bowl, my friends and I went to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the game. Now, most people were either watching the game in their room or at home (we’re mostly a commuter college), so the place wasn’t very busy, maybe a 1/4 full with people leaving as the game came on.
Our waitress showed up to our table in a reasonable amount of time the first time. She took our drink orders, brought them back, and asked if we’re ready to order. Since we’re watching the game, we told her not quite yet and that we planned on ordering at the start of the second quarter. So we kept watching the game and finished our drinks, expecting our waitress (who wasn’t busy) to check on us. We sat at our table for about 20 minutes with empty glasses, waiting for her to come back.
About halfway through the second quarter (so about 30 minutes after we ordered our drinks), she came and got us refills, and said she’d be right back to take our order. About 15 minutes later, she came and took our order. While she was there, we ask for refills again, and she says sure and heads off. 20 minutes after she left to get us refills, she stopped back by our table to see if we needed anything, we tell her that we asked for refills and she heads off again. She returned 5 minutes later with our drinks.
The second half was about to start, and our waitress disappeared. We didn’t see her for the rest of the game, with the exception of two times. The first time, I went up to the register and when I finally saw her, I asked if we could get refills, and she said when she was done with whatever it was that she was doing (I think it was like rolling silverware). The second time, I again had to go to the register again to ask for our bill, with about 5 minutes to go in the game.
So for those of you unfamiliar with how long football lasts, we saw our waitress twice in about 90 minutes. During all of this, there was another waitress whose table was just being rude – spilling drinks, being loud, and at one point asked for a refund on the food they didn’t eat. The other waitress handled all of this with class, while taking care of a full section (our section, for contrast, had us and one other table occupied).
When we got our bills, we asked for the manager, and wouldn’t pay until he showed up. While he was at our table, we explained that our waitress was at our table for a total of about 10 minutes in the 2 1/2 hours we were at the restaurant and that we wanted to tip the other waitress who, it seemed to us, was doing a phenomenal job with this terrible table.
The manager took our bill to cash it out and brought it back to our table. Not a minute after he did so, our waitress stopped by our table, slammed the tip on the table (we paid cash), and said, ‘I don’t want this and neither does my friend.'”
He Was A Big Tough Guy At First, But His Attitude Changed When They Asked For A Manager
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“I was at a Mexican food restaurant with a girl I was getting to know. It wasn’t a date, really, it was just like hanging out and getting to know each other and we decided to go grab a quick bite. Anyways, I’ve kind of gotten into this horrible habit of only paying with my debit card and never having cash on me. As you probably know, a lot of times when you pay using debit/credit over a certain amount (I believe it’s 5 or 10 dollars), places have you sign a receipt that they keep. The receipt the guy at this place handed me had a place to leave a tip.
Since I’ve been to this place a couple of times before, I know how the service works here (you order at the register, go and sit down, they call your number, and then you go up and receive your food), so I didn’t leave a tip. I’ll tip at this place/places like this if I order something specially made or something with extra toppings on it and they don’t charge me but, other than that, I really do not see the need to tip. They aren’t bringing your food to you, they aren’t doing anything out of their way, they aren’t bussing tables, there’s simply no need to tip.
Anyways, I didn’t leave a tip and the guy just said, ‘Wow, big spender here.’
I looked up at him and was like, ‘What?’ because at this point, I honestly had no idea what he was talking about. It didn’t even register in my mind that he could possibly be upset that I didn’t tip because he was doing nothing to warrant a tip. He just stands there and takes orders and calls them out; a job that he is paid an appropriate wage to do with no extra effort needed to be put in. It’d be the same as tipping someone working a register in a grocery store or at a McDonalds.
Well, back on topic, the guy ignored me and said to the girl I was with, ‘Glad you’re dating such a big spender. He can’t even afford to tip. How do you think that’s going to go further down the line in your relationship?’
She was just kind of baffled, I was just kind of baffled, and at that point, I just decided it was best to ignore the dude and go sit down, so I shrugged it off with a, ‘Whatever.’
After a bit of an awkward sit, our food came up, so I went up to get it and decided to just get it to go. We grabbed our drinks and our burritos and walked out of there while the guy gave me dirty looks and kept calling me ‘Big Spender,’ only to sit down on a bench near the restaurant and find out our orders were completely screwed up and nothing near what we ordered at all, as well as our drinks only being filled halfway. I’m normally not that picky and would have just said screw it, eaten it, and wrote it off as more trouble than it was worth to fix the order, but I was here with a girl and didn’t want to look like a wimp.
We took our food into the restaurant, where I explained to the guy that our order was messed up and our drinks were only half full. He said, ‘Oh, complaining about your order and couldn’t even be bothered to tip? Now you’re putting me through all this trouble and can’t be bothered to tip,’ and just kept rambling on with crap like that while a line formed behind us before he finally went to fill up our drinks. He came back and says ‘Whoops,’ before he pretended to trip and sent our drinks flying all over me and the girl. I demanded to speak to his manager and he immediately stops playing his little game, started saying that he realized he was being a jerk before, but that he really did trip and stuff like that. Basically saying anything to beg us not to talk to his manager and even offered us our money back on the order, but I refused and kept demanding to talk to his manager until the cook in the back finally heard what was going on and went to get him. The manager came out, the girl I was with and I both explained what happened, and the kid kept babbling that it was an accident. The manager took me and the girl in the back to get us cleaned up and, after that was done, he invited us to watch the CCTV footage of what happened along with the kid who spilled soda all over us.
The kid clearly tripped on nothing and deliberately sent the drinks flying on to us. The manager fired the kid on the spot, explained to us he had only hired him on for the summer since he was a long-time friend’s son and that the kid had been acting like a total jerk the entire time he was employed, but the manager regrettably turned the other cheek since it was his friend’s son. The manager was a really nice guy and paid for our meal as well as gave us a card each that gave us 10 free meals at his restaurant. He even went in the kitchen and cooked our orders himself, gave us them in to go bags, and paid for a cab (we had walked) to take us back to my place so we wouldn’t have to walk home in sticky clothes.”
She Ignored Him The Entire Meal, But That Wasn’t Even The Worst Of It
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“We went to a diner in Spring Lake, NJ. If you’ve never been there, or are convinced that the New Jersey beaches are only filled with Guidos, know that Spring Lake is an older, cleaner community where kids barely require adult supervision for anything. So, I expect that any place I go will be, at the very least, nice.
The group was two couples and myself. The waitress seated us, or should I say the four of them…she didn’t grab me an extra chair, I had to find my own. No big deal, I’m not a jerk. She then went around the table, getting drink orders…and proceeded to ignore me. I was hungover and all I wanted was water, but I could suffer a little longer, I guess. Like I said, I’m not a jerk. But then I got testy. She took over ten minutes to get two waters and two coffees for the table. Keep in mind, the place was mostly empty. She finally came back and asked what we’d like to eat, addressing the person to my right first. I jumped in and said, ‘Yes, I’d like to order, but a drink first would be nice, if you don’t mind.’ She looked at me as if I had two heads, like who the heck am I expecting to be waited on by my waitress. Whatever. We ordered, food came. It wasn’t her fault, but to add to the issues, the food sucked. Not just mine, everyone’s. Couldn’t even eat my toast because it was stale. My friend never got his juice that was supposed to be included. We asked for more butter for our dry toast, she brought two little ones. My female friend asks for a side of bacon, it never came.
Thank God there wasn’t six of us to mandate 18% gratuity because she got 0%. I’ve worked in food service, and that was not service – it was a nightmare.”
They Could Tell Immediately That Eating There Was Going To Be An Issue
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“My husband and I just went to one of three Mexican restaurants in our area. Upon entering we could tell right away it was probably a bad idea. The waitress went to take our drink orders and my husband asked what drafts they had, she said everything – then retracted her statement and said they had no drafts only bottles, it seriously made no sense. My husband opted to get a bottle only to have it arrive 15 minutes later and warm. There was one other table in the place.
We looked over the overpriced menu before we made our selection, ordering Al Carte, which was roughly $3-4 cheaper than anything off their dinner menu. Their menu was cluttered and everything was extra, it was hard to determine what came with a meal or what you were being charged extra for. We tried asking the waitress for an opinion on what to order and she just shook her head and said ‘I don’t know.’
When our food came out it was not what I ordered or even close to what I had asked for. My husband pointed out I was missing a taco and the burrito looked like an enchilada. She brought out my correct order, but our entire meal was bland. I ate the taco and couldn’t stand the burrito; my husband will usually eat anything and everything on his plate, but he only ate one or two bites. To top it all off, my husband had asked for a second drink as the woman was walking away, she replies ‘Sure, no problem,’ but we didn’t see her again till we get the check – which happened to list every topping on what we ordered as extra: cheese, lettuce, sour cream – you know, things that should generally come with the style of food.
The woman never once asked us if we needed something, how our meal was and everything seemed outrageous. My husband flat out refused to leave a tip, which is out of character of him. I’m usually the one saying I wouldn’t tip anything and reminds me how important it is to tip.”
